Programmable Pulse Shaping, Stretching and Amplification System
Abstract
The spatial coherence of lasers has limited their applications to parallel imaging and projectiondue to coherent artifacts, such as speckle. In contrast, traditional incoherent light sources, such asthermal sources or light emitting diodes (LEDs), have relatively low power per spatial mode.Recently we showed that a special type of laser, the random laser, can be engineered to have lowspatial coherence while maintaining high power per mode. Using it as the illumination source,we demonstrated speckle-free full-field imaging in the setting of significant optical scattering.To control the random lasing process, we propose to develop a programmable pulse shaping,stretching and amplification system that can generate arbitrary pump pulses. This system willenable us to study the response of a random laser to temporal modulation of the pump. Suchstudies will provide physical understanding of random laser dynamics, and also open the door totemporal control of random lasers.The temporal control of random lasers, which has not been done before, will provide thepossibility of synchronizing a large number of lasing modes via strong nonlinear interactions inan active random medium. Such synchronization may generate intense laser emission, in analogto the optical rogue waves. The proposed system will support our current research on randomlasers, spasers and optical rogue waves in the ONR-funded MURI program.The proposed pulse shaping, stretching and amplification system will be built on the existingultrafast laser in PI~s lab at Yale University. This DURIP program will play an important role inproviding essential equipment for students and postdocs to perform research in the MURIprogram.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 03, 2017
- Source ID
- N000141712316
Entities
People
- Hui Cao
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Yale University